Search Results for: French

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed that EU ministers approve an application from France to extend for another seven years the right to reduce the rate of excise duty applied in mainland France to traditional rum from the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and Guyane.…

Keith Nuthall
A FRENCH government state aid system for producers of liqueur wines and spirits, funding promotional measures, research, technical support and investment, is under threat, because of a European Court of Justice ruling that it should never have been sanctioned by the European Commission.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
SMOKING RATES in Canada have hit an all time low, according to new figures released by Statistics Canada, the federal government’s statistical agency.

Approximately 24 per cent of Canadians over the age of 15, or roughly six million people, smoked in the year 2000, it claims.…

Keith Nuthall
A REARGUARD action is being fought by the European Commission to save its ambitious proposals to impose a deadline of 2005 on the complete liberalisation of the EU electricity market. Following pressure from the French government, EU governments have agreed to rule the idea out, preferring a looser deadline, although this has yet to be formally agreed at the Council of Ministers.…

KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBER States of the European Union have been placed under increasing political and legal pressure from both the European Commission and the European Court of Justice to improve the environmental quality of their water supplies.

France, for instance, has lost a long-running case at the ECJ, over its failure to ensure the availability of sufficiently clean drinking water in Brittany.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has unveiled for the first time principles that it will apply when deciding whether schemes for the collection and recovery of household packaging waste break EU competition laws.

This follows approval by Brussels of new contracts offered by the French company Eco-Emballages SA and is a clear sign that Brussels would approve similar systems, were they to be introduced in the UK.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
In a test of national and international procedures to be followed after a nuclear accident, a simulated emergency has been carried out at the French reactor at Gravelines, near the border with Belgium across the English Channel. The test, which took place on May 22-23, involved “small plume of radioactivity being vented from the reactor, covering an evacuation area of 10 kilometres radius,” said David Kyd, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency.…

BY STEVE BAILEY, in Hanoi, Vietnam
WESTERN restaurateurs are opening businesses in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, and formerly the centre of a communist dictatorship that refused to allow foreign ownership of local companies and partnerships.

A string of western-owned restaurants, many under French control, have opened in the historic old quarter near St.…

KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE has been ordered by the European Commission to recover 100 million French Francs, (Euro 15.2 million), which it paid to ailing textile and clothing company Manufacture Corre(E IS ACUTE)zienne de Ve(E HAS CIRCUMFLEX)tements Ve(E HAS CIRCUMFLEX)tements (MCV).

Brussels had not been notified about the payments, which it says broke EU state aid rules, because they did not promote effective investment in the company which would have allowed it to become self-sufficient.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Following a decision today (Wednesday) by the European Commission, the way has been cleared for the sale of the French parcel and equipment delivery company Sernam to the transport company Geodis, also French. The Commission said the French government would be allowed to proceed with restructuring aid of about FF 2.9 billion (pounds 270 million) to Sernam, a subsidiary of the state owned railway company SNCF.…